


Contingency

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 17:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>4x16 tag, with major spoilers. There's more in that box than anyone suspected. Please heed content warning!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contingency

The door closed behind James with a heavy finality, as if it had severed Neal not only from his father but also from his past, leaving him adrift.

For a long time all he could do was stare at the door's blank facade. A cascade of equally implausible fantasies spun through his brain -- running after James, tackling him to the floor, dragging him in and _making_ him testify ...

But you couldn't force a person to be someone they weren't.

 _So who are YOU?_ Neal asked himself, and realized that he didn't have any idea how to answer that question.

But he knew who needed to be informed. Still staring at the door, he reached for his phone and slowly, deliberately, he pulled up Diana's number.

"Neal, I'm a little busy right now --"

"James is here," Neal said. "At June's. He just left. Send a car. You might be able to catch him."

"On it," Diana said, and hung up.

Neal closed his eyes briefly, and then went to the contents of the box.

Before, he'd been flipping through the papers rapidly, looking for something specific -- something he had desperately hoped he wouldn't find, until the words jumped out at him. _James Bennett._ He hadn't been reading, just looking for any mention of his father's name.

Now he was on a more general quest to discover what, exactly, _was_ in the box that they'd sacrificed so much to obtain. Ellen, Flynn, Pratt were all dead; Peter was in jail; James was gone, irrevocably and utterly, from Neal's life. For this. For whatever information was contained here.

He felt as if he should organize it somehow, but he wasn't even sure where to begin. Ellen didn't seem to have had any sort of filing system; either that, or she'd mixed it up deliberately to make it more difficult for someone to remove and destroy specific files.

But there was a lot in here. All of it was thirty years out of date, of course. Still ... she'd been meticulous and thorough. He couldn't help smiling as he spread out the papers. It was too bad Ellen and Peter had never had a chance to get to know each other. They would probably have gotten along well.

Then the smile dropped away. For moments at a time, he could forget the situation facing them: the magnitude of what James had done, the danger that Peter was in. And then it came crashing back down on him. He tried to breathe through it. In the past, he'd let emotion sweep him away, compromise his judgment. He couldn't afford that here. _Peter_ couldn't afford that.

A part of him wanted to rush straight down to wherever they'd taken Peter and babble out apologies and desperate promises to fix things. He wanted to look in Peter's eyes and know that he hadn't broken this beyond repair -- that he hadn't broken _them_ beyond repair.

But, while it might make _him_ feel better, it wouldn't be nearly as much help as doing the adult, sensible thing: sorting through Ellen's papers and trying to find a chain of links from there to the present day to prove the truth of Peter's story.

Diana dropped by a few minutes later to hand him his anklet. "Put this on," she said. "And _stay here._ "

"Did you have any luck finding --"

"No," Diana said. "Just stay put, okay? The last thing I need is to try to explain to the Marshals that you're at large. Don't leave June's."

Which of course made him want to as soon as Diana vanished through the door. He forced himself to bow his head down over the contents of the box again.

_I'm doing it like you'd want me to do it, Peter. Slowly and carefully. The right way._

Also, it helped take his mind off things.

The more he dug into Ellen's research, though, the more alarmed he became. The scope of the problem went far beyond James and Pratt. Ellen had found evidence of corruption in at least a dozen cops, spread out across the city. Some were highly placed on the force. No wonder they'd had to hustle her and James's family into WitSec.

All of these people would be fairly old in the present day. Retired, maybe. Dead, some of them. But Pratt had moved up in the hierarchy. Some of the others must have, too. With a queasy twist in his stomach, Neal remembered how sure James had been that the FBI was compromised. For a while, he and Peter had both assumed that Pratt was the person at the top of the chain.

 _What if it's not just Pratt?_ After all these years, there was no telling how far this had spread, and how thoroughly it had worked its way into every government agency. They'd assumed that Pratt was the one who'd ordered Flynn killed to silence him, but if it hadn't been Pratt, or if there were still people above Pratt at large ...

\-- then Peter might be deadly danger.

Neal reached for his phone to call Diana, just as it rang: Diana.

"Well, I guess we're on the same wavelength," he said, even as he felt the pit fall out of his stomach. She couldn't possibly be calling with good news. _Peter's been released, and we caught James ..._ But no. He had a terrible feeling that his day was about to get worse, although it didn't seem possible.

"Neal," Diana said. Her voice was curt with a strange note of -- _something_ underneath; he couldn't even figure out what. He could hear traffic in the background. "I'm on my way over. Don't do anything. Don't call anyone."

"No, Diana, you need to listen to me. Peter is --"

"Neal," she snapped. "Not on the phone."

"But --"

"Anything you are about to tell me, I already know. Believe me. I'll see you in a few minutes. Make coffee."

And she hung up.

Neal stared at the phone. Then he got up and did as she'd asked. He was tempted to open a bottle of wine, but the way this day was going, he had a feeling that if he started drinking, he wasn't going to stop.

There was a quick tap at the door, and Diana's voice said, "It's us."

 _Us?_ Neal thought, and he opened the door to admit Diana and Jones. One look at their still, drawn faces let him know that something had happened.

"That's it, huh?" Jones said, looking at the papers spread out across the table, coffee table, and every other surface.

"That's it, yeah." Although right now he had bigger things on his mind. "Look, I have to tell you -- this is bigger than Pratt. Peter might be in danger. You have to try to get him some kind of security detail."

"It's worse than that," Diana said quietly. "Sit down, Neal. Clinton, lock the door."

She pushed Neal gently into a chair. There were lines of strain around her eyes, her mouth. She looked as if she'd aged a decade since Neal had seen her last.

"Diana," Neal said helplessly, because he had a feeling that whatever she was about to say, he really wasn't going to want to hear.

"Don't say anything. Just listen." She paused, and seemed to be working her way up to whatever she needed to say. The whites of her eyes were reddened, and Neal realized that he already knew what she was about to tell him -- and he wanted to stop her, wanted to press his hand to her mouth and push the words back in, as if that could make it not real.

"About half an hour ago, I got a call from a friend of mine at Manhattan Correctional. She didn't see it -- in fact, no one I know and trust was a witness. But the official story is that Peter tried to escape. Somehow got out of his handcuffs and stole a gun from a guard. He was shot during the attempt to apprehend him."

"I've got to see him." Neal started to lurch to his feet.

"No, you don't." She pushed him back down. "He's dead, Neal."

The words fell on him like rain.

"Yes, this is bigger than Pratt. It's bigger than we ever guessed, and none of us knew how hard they'd try to keep it under wraps. Thank you," she murmured as Jones shoved a cup of coffee into her hands. He set another on the table at Neal's elbow.

"I -- I don't --" Neal discovered that he was shivering. He forced himself to straighten his back, forced his hands still and his face smooth. _It's like a con. The biggest con of all. You can crack later ..._

And it had gotten easier, something that scared the hell out of him. After Kate, after Ellen ... this wasn't the devastating blow it might once have been. He'd learned that he could go through it and survive.

Looking at Diana and Jones, he could see the same brittle fragility in them. All three of them were like land mines set on a hair trigger, quivering on the edge of an explosion they couldn't allow themselves.

"Does Elizabeth --" Neal began, and stopped. Swallowed. He couldn't think about Elizabeth right now.

"She's been told," Diana said quietly. "Hughes is with her now. He's one of the few people associated with the FBI that I trust at the moment."

"You didn't want to use the phone. Even your personal phone."

She shook her head. "We don't know what their reach is. Right now, we have to assume the worst-case scenario and work from there. We don't discuss this over the phone, unless they're burners. We don't research anything on the Internet from a computer that can be traced back to us."

"You think the NSA's in on it?"

"Worst-case scenario," Jones said quietly.

"And I hate to say it, Caffrey, but you're our best asset right now." Diana looked as if the admission was being pulled out of her with pliers. "You've spent your life like this. It's second nature for you to think that way. Clinton and I ... we haven't."

"We'll mess up," Jones supplied. "Do stupid things we don't even realize are stupid at the time."

 _Like leaving a map where an agent with a search warrant can find it,_ Neal thought. Once, he would have smiled at the recollection. He wondered if he'd ever again be able to smile at memories of Peter.

Which led him to another terrible thought in a day that was full of them. "Sara," he gasped, bolting up out of his chair. "Oh God. Sara."

Both of the agents looked confused. "Neal, there's no reason why they'd go after her," Diana said, and then frowned suspiciously. "Is there?"

"She was with me in the Empire State Building. A whole crowd of tourists saw us -- it was part of the plan. And she knows about the box; she knows where it is now. She was there with me when I smuggled it out of the building."

"Where is she now?"

Neal did some quick mental math. "About thirty thousand feet in the air, over the Atlantic. She's moving to London."

"Then she ought to be fine until she lands at Heathrow," Diana said. "I have a friend at the embassy. I can call him and cash in a favor -- have him keep an eye on her for a couple of days, off the books. By that time --" She took a deep breath and looked at Jones. He returned a small shrug.

"By that time what?" Neal asked, but his heart had already started a sharp flutter in his chest.

Diana held out her hand, and slowly unfolded the fingers. Nestling there was his anklet key.

Neal stared at her.

"Peter--" Her voice faltered very slightly on the name. "Awhile back, Peter authorized me to have my own copy, since I'm your backup handler when he's not available." As Neal continued to stare, she pressed it into his hand and folded his fingers over it. His own hands were cold, but hers felt like ice. "If you cut the anklet, the Marshals will be on it in minutes. But if the anklet is never cut, they might not realize you're gone for days, especially if I confine you to house arrest at June's -- a perfectly sensible precaution in light of everything else that's going on."

"Diana," Neal began, and stopped. He looked between her and Jones, and the words that rose in his throat were ones he would have considered insane merely a year ago. _I don't want to go. I want to stay here and help you solve this._

"Here's what you're going to do," Diana said. She pointed at the papers on the table. "There's solid evidence in those, right? Enough to finger a lot of bad people?"

Neal nodded.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but right now I don't dare trust something that valuable to the FBI evidence warehouse. As soon as we walk out of here, you, Caffrey, are going to pull strings I know you can pull, and you're going to get yourself on a flight to London under a name that isn't yours, that the FBI doesn't know about."

"And don't try to tell us you haven't got half a dozen fake passports around," Jones added. "We're not stupid."

"That box is going with you," Diana said. "When you get to London, find Sara. Tell her what's going on. Find a safe place to stash the originals, make several sets of copies, and mail one of them to me."

"Not to your house," Neal said. His con artist instincts were starting to kick in. He'd been on the run for a lot of years; the habits flowed back, the ingrained low-grade paranoia. "We'll need a mail drop."

"I'll get one," Diana said, and then shook her head. "No, better -- you and your little buddy get one, or use one you've already got. That way they can't trace it back to me and put surveillance on it. We can work out a way for you to pass the address on to me. Oh, and Neal?" She pointed to his hand. "When someone inevitably asks, you stole that key. I know nothing about it."

"Well, you know how lightfingered I am." None of this felt real. It was all moving so fast. He couldn't allow himself to think about it too much, or he'd crack in a way he really couldn't afford right now.

_And I tried so damned hard to do things right this time._

"No sign of James, by the way," Diana said. "I know you're going to want to go after him. _I_ want to go after him." Something dark showed under the surface for just a moment, like a submerged log in a placid lake -- there and then gone. "But getting the evidence to a safe place, in another country, has to be our first priority." She fixed Neal with an intense stare. "I need to know you're on the same page with us on that."

"I am." He didn't even have to think about it. No going rogue. Not this time.

Not yet.

Diana looked at Jones. "We should get moving." He nodded, and she returned her level stare to Neal.

"I know we're forgetting things we'll wish later that we'd figured out now," she said. "But there really isn't time. Clinton and I have to get back to White Collar before people start wondering where we are. And hell, maybe it's better if we don't have our lines of communication worked out in too much detail. Knowing you, you'll find a way to get in touch."

"I will," Neal said, heartfelt.

There was so much he wanted to say: _Thank you_ and _I'm sorry, so sorry_ and _I didn't want it to end this way_ and maybe, just maybe, _This isn't the end._ Instead, he got up and he hugged her. He'd never hugged her before, never even thought about it, and he halfway expected her to push him away. Instead, she clung to him like a drowning person holding onto their savior, and for just an instant she buried her face in his shoulder; he felt her shake with something like a sob.

His own eyes were wet when he let her go.

"You're a terrible influence, Caffrey." Jones started to shake his hand, then pulled him into a quick, one-armed hug instead. "Be safe out there."

Diana had pulled herself together and was all business again. "If worst comes to worst, you can leave a message for me with Jason Trent at the American Embassy in London. Like I said, he's an old friend, and I know he wouldn't be involved in anything like this."

"Take care of Elizabeth," Neal said, but he knew they would. He wanted to leave some kind of message for her -- _will you tell her, will you tell her I didn't want this, will you tell her I didn't run?_ \-- but he couldn't find the words. They would tell her what they thought she should know, whether it was the truth or only a small part of it.

The door, closing behind them, sounded as final as it had earlier when James had walked out of his life. And yet, it was different.

Neal retrieved a clean emergency phone that he'd stashed behind a painting, in one of Byron's many hide-holes. He called Mozzie and said a single word: "Cobra." Then he hung up. Longer explanations would wait for when they were at the rendezvous point.

His emergency escape bag was ready to go, as always, with passports, toiletries, and a change of clothes. He scooped the papers into a briefcase -- for going through airport security, it was best to look as tidy and prepared as possible. A mess of papers in the bottom of a duffle bag screamed _Something to hide._ A neatly arranged briefcase just indicated a businessman traveling overseas. Mozzie probably had something innocuous lying around that he could use for the top few layers in case the briefcase was opened.

He looked around June's apartment one more time. Somehow it seemed that he was always leaving this place -- and coming back to it.

He wondered if he'd be coming back this time.

Then he slipped the key into his anklet lock, and turned it.

**Author's Note:**

> I sort of hate myself for the character death, and yet - I love the scenario! Neal and Sara and Mozzie running around England, passing messages to Jones & Diana, all of them in mortal danger ... I think it would make an awesome season five. Except for being miserably depressing, of course.
> 
> ETA 3-12-14: I forgot to go back and link from this fic to [its sequel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/951349), which is basically a fixit. :D


End file.
